The Weekly Links 4

This is the 4th post in an ongoing series of weekly roundups of links useful to developers.  As I was working in London last week, this is a bumper post incorporating two weeks worth of links. 

Tools

• TFS 2010 Power Tools – Buck Hodges of the VSTS team announces the release of the TFS 2010 Power Tools.
• FlairBuilder Desktop – My colleague Andy Poots blogs about this handy wireframing tool.
• Ook! .Net Compiler – another esoteric language to add to the ranks of BrainF*@k and LOLCODE.  I learned about the Ook! language by following the Irish Open Spaces Coding Day II on Twitter which unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend… But Andrea tells me it is likely to be repeated again in August/September.

Information

• Extension Methods Are Helper Methods That Taste Like Candy – John Sonmez looks at how to make use of C# extension methods.
• C# Extension Methods - To Extend or Not To Extend... – In a related article, James Michael Hare discusses when you should write an extension method.
• Breaking through the class sealing - Jason Crease gives the lowdown on using the sealed keyword in .NET.
• Back to the basics: constants vs read-only fields – A review of the differences between constants and read-only fields in the .NET framework.
• 6 important .NET concepts: - Stack, heap, Value types, reference types, boxing and Unboxing – A handy reference article on the Code Project site that describes these essential topics.
• Dynamically Read, Compile, and Run Source Code From a Text File – Does what it says on the tin… Interesting article, but I prefer using CSI, a simple C# interpreter written by David Anson, a Microsoft developer.
• 15+ hours of free Visual Studio 2010 – Free online training from Microsoft and AppDev.

SharePoint Related

• An Expected Error Has Occurred – Todd Carter describes how to create custom error pages in SharePoint 2010.
• SharePoint Visio Stencil and Template – Maxime Bombardier on her MSDN blog makes available a Visio template for the easy design of WSPs and features.
• Temporarily disabling List View Threshold on a large list – This article from the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog discusses how to view large lists (> 5000 unfiltered items) in SharePoint 2010.
• How to: Build a SharePoint 2010 PowerShell Cmdlet – Corey Roth takes you through how to create your first PowerShell cmdlet for SharePoint.
• Service Application Framework Architecture – An overview of this framework in the SharePoint Foundation 2010 (the successor to WSS 3.0).

Events

• DevDays 2010 – Digital Circle and the All Island Software Network are organising a conference for all those developing mobile applications in Ireland, in Belfast (25th May) and Dublin (27th May).
• Azure Self-paced Interactive Learning Course – A free online course from Microsoft, starting on the 10th May.
• Idea Hacking #1 Storytelling – A very different event happening in Derry on 3rd June.
• Barcamp Belfast – the postponed Barcamp is now rescheduled for 22nd May.

Careers

• Barclay Communications – iPhone developer and web developer required for the Belfast office.
• CyberSource – A number of roles (QA and Software Engineers) at various levels are being advertised for this growing company, based in Belfast.
• 8over8 – This Derry based company is continuing to advertise for .Net developers.
• Latens – Software Engineers required for the Belfast office.
• ASG – Software and QA Engineers required for their Belfast office.
• Kainos – Graduate Developers required for the Belfast software company.
• Singularity – Various roles being advertised with the Derry based company.
• Learning Pool – The Derry based company are seeking PHP developers (intermediate and advanced) and technical support agents.